There was a guy who attempted suicide by firing a nail gun into his ear. I took care of him in the ICU and he remembers everything. He’d been depressed a long time and decided to end it. Nailed himself, sat around a while before deciding he didn’t want to die, drove himself to the ER, walked inside and fainted. It was so weird how stoic he was about it all.
NAD
Young trauma patient ~17yo T-boned by a garbage truck. Moving him on to the CT table he said “OW” and silent tears cane down his face. Then he apologized for complaining, and thanked us profusely. Turns out he had a few broken vertebrae, broke half his ribs, and had a fractured hip and clavicle. Kid whimpered a few times during the CTs, and again apologized when we came back in. Like dude, you could scream in my face and I’d understand.
Not sure how fitting this is but my mom one has to give under for a surgery with her ankle. She was in pain the whole way to the hospital but when she saw the nurse coming with the IV she suddenly shifted from pain to saying “oh hell no! YOU are not doing that, go get me someone else!” I guess she had this nurse before and did not like how she put IVs in or anything sharp. She refused to let her do anything involving pointy objects during her stay.
Not doctor but EMT.
Had my fair share of over dramatics, though I would say most of them suffered from some sort of mental impairment or dementia. Most were manageable but I do remember this one woman that we had to take to dialysis on a regular basis.
It was always hell from the moment we walked into her nursing home room. “WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?!? HELP IM BEING KIDNAPPED! THEYRE GOING TO RAPE ME!” Etc.
I’m pretty patient. The first maybe five or so times we ran her we were very slow and gentle with her, I would explain multiple times to her who we were, what we were doing, showed her our ids, and so on. But the screaming and yelling and flailing would continue.
One day we picked her up from the dialysis center and they told us that she was absolutely not welcome back unless the nursing home started HIGHLY medicating her. See, not everyone that goes to dialysis is old and feeble. A lot of younger folks come in on their own power. And they told us that nearly a dozen clients had stopped coming in and switched centers due to her outbursts. In the USA healthcare is a business …
Most underdramatic was the gentleman that we were taking from an ER to a specialty trauma center. He had been in a bar and witnessed a bar fight. He tried to break it up. One of the guys smashed a beer bottle over his head.
Spoiler….its not like on tv.
The beer bottle was hard enough to break his skull, but it also broke the beer bottle. The way the impact hit it partially popped his eyeball out of the socket. Then the broken beer bottle traveled down his face and sliced the eyeball in half.
Very few injuries bothered me that I saw as an EMT but the second I saw his face my eyes just started watering.
But he was the calmest, most polite mexican gentleman. Only spoke a little english but everything was “Si senor” or something of equal politeness. Didnt utter a single complaint.
My brother had a head cold so my mom took him along with us to my asthma appointment to ask my doctor for some advice. My brother turns into a huge baby anytime he gets a cold so he was acting like he was dying. The doctor is busy palpitating my back when my brother decides that instead of sneezing like a normal person and pinching his nose he’s just going to snot rocket everywhere. The mf blows a huge snot bubble and just sits there with it, doesn’t ask for a tissue or anything. My mom had to literally wipe his nose for him, he’s not even little at this point he’s like 12. The doctor was mortified. I wanted to yeet his ass out the 3rd story window.